Preparing for my 2024 Sabbatical

As we slowly move into a New Year, I am deep in thought about the ways this culture views labor. 2024 brought with it for me a deep commitment to compassion, space and boundaries. I am only able to have a life-giving rest practice because I have boundaries that center my divinity. I don’t attach my worth to my accomplishments, to-do list or career. I truly never have and I’m so grateful for this feat. Even when I was unemployed, I knew deep down I was enough and my life was worth so much. I always knew I was “that girl.” It’s as if capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy had not hooked its beast like tentacles into my being. I had escaped.

Every year since 2018, I take a sabbath during the month of November. https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/2019/12/01/observations-from-my-month-long-sabbath/ This year, I will instead take an extended Sabbatical that will run from April 1st – August 1st. I am experimenting with this longer time to gain information on what it would feel like to maroon and go completely underground in the near future. To me, the underground looks like: no work emails, no bookings that would take me all over the world to lecture and install rest experiences (in 2023 I had 30 bookings, flew close to 100,000 airline miles, boarded 26 round trip flights. I lectured in Amsterdam and participated in a theater festival in Melbourne, Australia, was in residency as a scholar-artist at NYU for the Fall 2023 semester) and no social media.

I will have to be flexible, subversive and committed to rest for this sabbatical that will be here in a few months. It will not be perfect and there are a few engagements that I remained open to because they felt special and sparked a deep curiosity and light in me. I will be learning and listening as I go and moving at the pace of my heart. I will be writing for pleasure, reading lots of fiction, taking ballet classes and spending intentional time with family. I will be listening and resting. I pray my daydreams and the DreamSpace cracks open for me. I will rest!

(Photo credit: Charlie Watts)

Center for the Fighting Diaspora

Film Clips for 2/18/23

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hDVS5cf2ob8XDy0RbM1y0rqMZYno7ejd?usp=sharing

Cover Reveal and Pre-Order my debut book!

I’m overjoyed to share the cover for my debut book REST IS RESISTANCE: A MANIFESTO. I’ve prayed over altars and dreamed for thousands of hours to birth this book. I hope it will be a balm for an exhausted world. It publishes October 11. 2022. You can pre-order it starting today!

Visit thenapministry.com for all the bookseller links.

Rest is anything that connects your mind and body.

This is about more than naps. This is about more than naps. This is about more than naps.

This has been my battle cry and mantra since I created the “Rest is Resistance” framework in 2016. I begin experimenting with rest as a tool for my own liberation and healing in 2013. It has always been about more than taking a full nap. My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body. I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more and most importantly as a remembrance to my Ancestors who had their DreamSpace stolen from them. This is about more than naps. It is not about fluffy pillows, expensive sheets, silk sleep masks or any other external, frivolous, consumerist gimmick. It is about a deep unraveling from white supremacy and capitalism. These two systems are violent and evil. History tells us this and our present living shows this. Rest pushes back and disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor. It is a counter narrative. We know that we are not machines. We are divine.

It is not a joke nor anything to make light of. Black people are dying from sleep deprivation and our resistance to rest is a social justice and public health issue. Capitalism was created on plantations during chattel slavery and is the same system that is driving the entire globe to exhaustion and a deep disconnection with our bodies and minds today. We are no longer divine human beings in this system and instead machines. This is metaphysical, spiritual and political work and anyone who uplifts a message of rest as a form of resistance without tapping into the history of Black liberation and the evils of capitalism is nothing but agent of grind culture. Do not listen. You should instead read texts on Black liberation like: bell hooks, James Cone, Toni Morrison, Katie Cannon, Audre Lorde, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By centering this scholarship you are respecting the work that has influenced and inspired everything about The Nap Ministry. You will begin the process of deprogramming from your brainwashing under grind culture. Go slow. Learn history. Learn your own history. View your body as its own unique technology. Listen.

This work is saving the lives of so many and saved my life. This work should be respected as a balm for all of humanity. Find ways to connect back to your body and mind. Find ways to intentionally slow down. Find ways to re-imagine and snatch rest right now. It is your divine and human right to do so. WE WILL REST!

Your faithful Nap Bishop,

Tricia Hersey

“Rest Life”

May this rest meditation activate and pull you deep into the portal of rest.

Apple Music

https://music.apple.com/us/album/rest-life-single/1593190533

You Tube https://youtu.be/nENorI4rWeU

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/track/2ml6ugCsDyUiGane8eAfZ0?si=ce31c81b03b848be

“How will you be useless to capitalism today?” -Bronte Velez

A question to embody everyday. My dear friend Bronte said this to me one day and it is a question that continues to morph and shapeshfit each time I read it. It is an inquiry for a lifetime. Take a moment to Journal. Meditate. Sleep on it. Daydream.

Please rest.

Disrupt and push back against a system that views you as a machine. You are not a machine. You are a divine human being. WE WILL REST!

Photo from our February 2020 Resurrect Rest School in Atlanta, Georgia.
Drawing from the spirit of connected and in-person community organizing, Resurrect Rest School is a gathering space dedicated to the deep study, teaching, and practice of The Nap Ministry’s rest-as-resistance framework. The School serves as an intensive intervention and provocative space to understand and embody The 4 Tenets of The Nap Ministry, a series of core principles infused with the principles of Black Liberation Theology, Afrofuturism, Womanism, somatics, and communal care.

Photo by: Wild Talk Stories & Strategies wildtvlk.com

Sabbath Time!

Today, March 1, 2021 is the first day of a 2 month Sabbath for me. I have been planning this pause for almost 6 months. I believe in praxis and that liberation via rest will come when we actually make it a part of our lives. No bookings, no social media, no labor, no email. A deep moment to process, rest and imagine. The portal of naps is waiting for me and for us all. I invite you to also find space to detox from technology weekly and to re-imagine rest as the foundation for your own liberation practice.

Our work has a framework: REST IS RESISTANCE!

We are deeply influenced by Black Liberation Theology, Womanism/Womanist Theology, Afro Futurism, Reparations Theory, Somatics and Community Organizing.

Womanism is deep and layered and is the foundation of this work. There are so many amazing books, articles and ways to engage with it. Let slow research be a part of your deprogramming and healing. You will not get free by simply reading memes on social media and attempting to quickly engage via the fast paced scroll life. You will have to stop. You will have to dismantle your own unique cultural history in order to heal your own collective and individual traumas. You will have to do real work to change. Resting is a meticulous love practice. I love this definition by Layli Phillips because of its expansiveness and space for interconnectedness.

What is womanist theology: “Womanism is a social change perspective rooted in Black women’s and other women of color’s everyday experiences and everyday methods of problem solving in everyday spaces, extended to the problem of ending all forms of oppression for all people, restoring the balance between people and the environment/nature, and reconciling human life with the spiritual dimension.” -Layli Phillips, “Womanism: On Its Own,” in The Womanist Reader, p. xx.

For Black Liberation Theology, the book I turn to is from the Father of Black Liberation Theology, James Cone. Spend time slowly going through his work in “A Black Theology of Liberation”

This work is a social justice movement and we have never identified ourselves as being a part of the wellness industry. We are deeply committed to dismantling white supremacy and capitalism by using rest as the foundation for this disruption. We believe rest is a spiritual practice, a racial justice issue and a social justice issue. I began experimenting with these ideals as a way to connect with my Ancestors, to receive a Word from them and to honor my body via rest for the rest they never were able to embody due to slavery and capitalism. This is about more than naps. The work is layered, nuanced and an experimentation.

We Will Rest.

Resources from “A Space to Rest’ Virtual Experience with Wa Na Wari, Central District Forum Ideas and Langston

What an amazing virtual rest experience that took place today. Close to 60 resters gathered via Zoom for storytelling, daydreaming, rest and discussion. I am so honored to have the opportunity to hold space for daydreaming, rest, and silence. To imagine a New World that centers liberation, we must practice rest as our foundation to invent, restore, imagine, and build.

I have included the text we engaged with today:

Article: Love as the Practice of Freedom  by: bell hooks

Books:

Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader, Edited by Katie Geneva Cannon, Emilie M. Townes, and Angela D. Sims.

Renaissance by: Ruth Forman (the specific poem from the book is titled, “On This Day.”)

Here is the poem in full:

On This Day

this is a day without chairs
a day where all the rooms melt together
and there are only corners/corners and humming
wishes and slight breeze
brushing you like palms
this is a day of prayers
a day of painful breaking/a day of peace beneath
a day of arms
of hands
eyes and quiet windows

i wish you love from your mother backwards

i wish you deep tunnels without fear
i wish you children’s laughter
i wish you cactus flowers
i wish you moonlight
i wish you real eyes
i wish you a hand across your back/soft like when you were a child
i wish you tears
i wish you clean
i wish you angels in conference around your bed holding you
so there is no space for me even to touch you/just watch

i wish your mother watching

i wish you abalone dreams
i wish you peace
i wish you doves in your kitchen
moonlight in your bathroom
candles when your eyes close and dawn when they open
i wish you so many arms across your shoulders
so many lips kissing your ears that you smile from the inconvenience
i wish you all your babies’ love attacking the center of your heart
just so you know they are there

i wish you banisters, railings, and arms around your waist
i wish you training wheels, i wish you strong shoes
i wish you water o i wish you water
through your feet flowing like a stream
and i wish you hammocks
and melon on your eyes
strawberries in your mouth
and fingers in your hand
fingers in your hand all day
through this house
on this day with no rooms
only corners
and an uncommon breeze

By: Ruth Forman

Your Faithful Nap Bishop,

Tricia

 

 

Slowly emerging after a 3 week Sabbath

Photo by Charlie Watts Photography. It is part of a photography project curated by Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry and the photographer.

I have claimed the Year of 2020 as “The Year of Grief. The Year of Rest.” I took an impromptu 3 week Sabbath during the height of the uprisings for Black Lives that spilled millions onto American and international streets. I watched with pride as people reacted and protested in a way that shows they are still human.  We are divine human beings. Our culture forgets and hides this truth. I was beaming with pride and joy to see. But, I am still processing. So, I signed off from work emails, social media, technology, and labor to grieve and process. I practice what I preach.

I am still processing a global pandemic. I am grieving all the lives lost and missed opportunities. I miss gathering for our Collective Napping Experiences. I am disgusted by our racist health system that has been this way forever.  Black, Latino, and Indigenous People are dying at higher rates from COVID-19 due to this sick system. I am sitting in this grief and will not look away.  I want to mourn and lament and realize this culture is not set up with systems of care to allow others to stop long enough to rest. This is why this Ministry exists.

I am sick of rushing and the obsession with opening back up and getting back to normal. I never want to see normal or the way it was again. It is time for a new way. Rest and slowing down will be the foundation for this liberated future that many are screaming about online via memes, in the streets during the uprisings for Black Lives and in our hearts. We are not well. We are exhausted and disgusted. I am still grieving from hearing in disturbing detail the lynching of George Floyd by police in Minnesota. I did not watch the video and will never watch the video. I protect my heart and eyes from what my bones already know – I am a target in America. This is not new information. It’s ancient.

So, I am now back from 3 weeks of rest and slowing down. I felt like an outlier the entire time as my inboxes filled up with requests for interviews to speak about the uprisings, to share the repetitive Good News of Rest that I have been preaching since 2016. People were hungry for a reply. Thirsty for me to calm the exhausted beast and soothe the hearts of those who finally decided to wake up to the racial terror that Black folks have been yelling about for decades and centuries. It has always been time for justice. It has always been time to rest. Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.  This is our main tenet since we started researching our REST IS RESISTANCE framework back in 2013. We cling to this truth like a lifeboat in a raging sea. We cling to the power of collective care and collective rest opening the DREAMSPACE that will allow us to invent and imagine a New World rooted in rest.

I am back from Sabbath still processing. It was a beautiful resistance and I went in and out of a liminal space of sleep and meditation. I daydreamed. I stared at the sky.  May a space to daydream and slow down open to you. May you realize the power of taking rest since no one will give it to you. This is why rest is a resistance and a slow meticulous love practice. We must continue deprogramming from grind culture. We must continue not turning away from our own terror. We must deconstruct around the ways we uphold grind culture, capitalism and white supremacy.  We must wake up. We will rest.

In rest and power,

Your faithful Nap Bishop